


White Noise

by Nyanshadowforce



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Genre: Multi, Other, That's what it is and you know it, wlw and mlm solidarity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 17:45:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14574252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyanshadowforce/pseuds/Nyanshadowforce
Summary: "Jordan didn’t respond. Just stared into Nick’s soul with that boundless, pearly gaze that had always drawn him to her in such a mysterious way. Over the passage of time and life, it had become much less captivating."





	White Noise

**Author's Note:**

> This is a moment between Nick and Jordan, something that was originally a small school assignment before it accidentally became a full blown fic. It's a scene I expected in the book that never happened. Through a prompt assignment, I decided to make it happen myself.

Outside, muffled of horns blared from drifting automobiles as they crawled their way down the hot streets of the financial district, the street’s name forgotten in the blur that was a late morning in New York City. Dusty sunlight beamed only against the windowed walls into the tiny restaurant, illuminating steam wafting from lumps of mashed potatoes and the tired, concentrated faces of young and once ambitious businessmen. 

Nick’s pencil tapped on table, the upper half of it bathed in light. With each tap, a small mark was left on the paper, eventually compiling into a large enough group of sloppy scratches to be considered a sketched swarm of gnats. 

When he’d tried to read the form earlier, the words had blurred together in inky, unfathomable discord. In their sophisticated approach, the words had lost all meaning, meaning that Nick was supposed to find if he was going to keep this particularly difficult client’s attention. 

Meaning that was impossible to find through the returning thoughts of blood sunken into water, yellow leaves floating like paper boats at level with a river of death.

The blanks stayed vacant. Nick pushed the paper away, cupping his face in his hands, sliding his fingers through his hair shortly after. 

Dammit. 

Nameless friends sat across from him in the booth, raising a brow. One of them, a man in his early fifties, spoke in a thick smoker’s voice. “They give you another riddle, Nicky?” 

“No.” He always hated it when they called him that. “I’m just not feeling well.” 

The other man responded with a grunt and returned his attention to the morning paper. Nick leaned back, Glancing out the window at nothing. Breathing, existing, trying to melt back into the world. 

For a moment he almost managed to merge with society. He almost believed that maybe, just maybe, life could move on as per usual today. As it always had. He believed that he could blend back into the common rabble today, tomorrow, or the day after that. That nothing had changed. 

But he was lying to himself. 

The men behind him whispered about the newspaper and the man on West Egg that had been shot in a homicide-suicide. That was enough anchor Nick in the real world. 

He sat up, sliding blank forms into a folder with a loose hand. A server approached the table just as he stood. 

“Can I do anything for you?” 

Nick’s voice was stronger now. Annoyed. “No.” 

Without a second thought, he pushed past the blonde woman and towards the door. Nick could feel the hot stares of the men at the booth, and the bewildered look on the server’s face. Guilt spun somewhere in his lungs but was suffocated by the hot air of the cramped sidewalk. The day was still busy, men just like Nick hauling suitcases from taxis and women in yellow dresses blooming like flowers in the sun with bright smiles. 

Through the tumult of human life, Nick stood alone against a glass window. Wondering if this was what life was through the eyes of Gatsby. Inside looking out, yet still outside of the glass, just like everyone else. Inside looking out yet outside all the same, perceiving a barrier that simply did not exist. 

 

And just as desperately as Gatsby, Nick searched for an escape. 

He eyed the payphone across the street. In a moment, it was in his grasp. “I’m sorry. I won’t be returning to the office today. Yes, yes.” He answered monotone questions with a monotone answers. “Family emergency.” 

*******

During the ride back home through the Valley of Ashes, the sky had become sodden black-grey with rain clouds and dust. Black, watery clumps dropped on the ground like sleet morphing dust and smoke into a repugnant ebony mud. Nick quietly thanked himself for taking the train, yet cursed himself all the same for allowing his gaze to fall of the closed jaws of Wilson’s garage. 

West Egg was no better. Heavy droplets imbued the grass and the concrete of Nick’s driveway. Slick with rainwater, his home was as grey as the sky. Several cars sat dormant on Gatsby’s drive, police tape over the gate shaking like the close birch’s yellow leaves in the wind.

In his workroom, the blinds remained closed. The room was bathed in the white artificial light of a desk lamp. Nick’s eyes remained fixed on the fourth number down on the notebook page, written sloppily in black ink. 

The tone rang in his ears, over and over, palms becoming sweaty around the handset of the phone. Then, and many more tries following then, there was no answer. 

This process was repeated several more times for an uncountable amount of time until there was a knock at the room’s door. 

“I told you, Finn, I’m busy. Come back in another hour.” 

His request was ignored. Light of a deeper, shadowed white fell on Nick’s back as the door was fully opened. He turned in his chair, glaring at the doorway about to hiss another low-tempered comment until the face of his visitor became clear. Jordan Baker. 

 

Nick stared. Jordan stared back with as much emotion as the phone numbers that refused to answer his hailings. 

“...I told Finn I wasn’t taking visitors.” 

Jordan floated into the room, leaning one arm against the window sill as she settled like a drifting leaf. “And your butler knows better than to leave you in the dark, calling people you don’t know about someone they’ve probably forgotten.” 

“Then I’ll remind them.” Nick snapped back.

Jordan didn’t respond. Just stared into Nick’s soul with that boundless, pearly gaze that had always drawn him to her in such a mysterious way. Over the passage of time and life, it had become much less captivating.

Nick refused to face her as he marked over another vacant number. The pen was pushed down enough to leave an indention on the parchment. “I remember you said something about not giving a damn about me, Jordan.”

“I was having a bad day.” She replied flatly. “It’s not completely untrue. I don’t give a damn about you. Not romantically.” 

Nick remained silent. She continued. 

“You’re not a bad man. Not a bad friend, either. It’s just what you do that fascinates me. Before you ask, no, I’m not going to Gatsby’s funeral, and I know you were going to ask because you’ve been asking everyone and their mother for the last week, and that’s the fascinating part.” 

After a hundred years, Nick muttered, “Four Days.” 

Jordan hummed at him, the kind of fluttering hum that rose from the delight of a disturbed, resting feline. 

The pen was roughly set down on the desk, placed with a flat, heavy palm. The noise prompted Jordan’s eyebrows to raise, and the voice following aligned on only slightly less than the same tone. “Four days ago, the most well-known man is West Egg is shot in the heart in his own pool by a madman, and no one but his father and some bond salesman cares enough to go to his funeral. Doesn’t that seem unfair to you?” 

“What do you care?” Jordan sang. “Gatsby never did a thing for you.” 

In a split second, every word and moment of Gatsby’s presence flashed in Nick’s mind alongside hot scorn. “He doesn’t have to do something extraordinary for my life to be respected in his death.” The thoughts began to cool. “It’s the least he deserves.”

After another gravid pause Jordan occupied herself by curling one of the blinds down and looking at nothing outside. Nothing, or the rain racing from the afternoon’s grey clouds. All accounts of thunder had ceased thirty minutes ago. Nick’s fingers drumming on paper made a liable replacement. 

Underneath the soft smile she wore, Jordan Baker’s face was absorbed in thought, and soon enough her fingers began to copy the pattern of Nick’s. Not in irritation, but investigation of thought. 

A moment later, Jordan spoke a slow string of words that brought the whole world to a standstill. The rain became noiseless, the buzzing of the nearby desk lamp hushed in anticipation of an answer that Nick never once considered he’d be asked, or have to ask himself. 

“Did you love him, Nick?” 

Nick’s grip on everything- on himself, and on the pen that had returned to his fidgeting fingers -loosened. First his head rose, then his shoulders slumped and eyes fell to the floor in immediate thought. It was a slow process to drag the burden of the question. 

Did he love Gatsby? A question that repeated in Nick’s head, the ghost of it slipping from his lips in a mutter. With no thought, he spoke his answer in a brittle tone. 

“I don’t know.” 

Nick wasn’t sure if he even wanted to. 

“Fair enough.” Jordan said, having not once looked Nick in the eye since her appearance in the doorway. “I just want you to know, whether you love him or not, that Gatsby wouldn’t have lived even if he survived.” 

He squinted at her. “Wouldn’t have lived? What do you m-” 

Jordan interrupted, her voice suddenly indignant in a way that drew the attention of all life to her words. Nick flinched in a way he never had before in her presence. “Gatsby died the moment Daisy refused to live in his illusion of life. When she chose Tom, he lost his grip on the past he reached for so devotedly for all those years. All George did was speed up the fall.” 

Noise returned to the office. Wind sent a crest of rain over the roof, and an unexpected rumble of thunder made the desk lamp blink. Nick blinked just as rapidly, staring at the same invisible thing that Jordan had seen out the window through the blinds. 

She was right. 

The woman sighed, looking at Nick with a tired acknowledgement of him absorbing her words. She turned and started for the door, stopping and resting one soft hand resting on the doorway as she glanced at him from the side. “Just wanted to enlighten you. Try to get your mind focused on something else for a little while. Good afternoon, Nick.” 

The door closed without another word. Color drained from the room, white noise overcoming light and shadow. 

“Good afternoon, Jordan.” He echoed to no one.


End file.
